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Tuesday, 2 August 2016

☀ A Mighty Fortress: Milo Porter Mysteries [1] - S.D. Thames

Thank you for joining us on the Virtual Book Tour for A Mighty Fortress, a Mystery Thriller by S.D. Thames (1 July 2016, S.D. Thames, 458 pages).

A Mighty Fortress is the first book in the Milo Porter Mysteries series, a set of gritty crime thrillers that will remind you of the characters from Robert B. Parker and Robert Crais. If you like gripping suspense, hardboiled crime-solvers, and heart-stopping action, then you’ll love the powerful series starter from S.D. Thames.

Milo Porter leads a happy life in Tampa, Florida. The Iraq war veteran runs routine private investigations by day and coaches powerlifting at night. When Chad Scalzo, the grandson of a rumored mob boss, goes missing, Milo takes the seemingly easy case. After Chad turns up dead, Milo goes from investigator to suspect.

As he seeks to clear his own name, Milo finds himself at the crossroads of two crooked investigations -- one by the mob and the other by the police. With the body count climbing, Milo discovers the key to the case in the last known person to see Chad alive.

CHAPTER ONE

The Wakeup Call

It started with a dreadful droning. Artillery shells were exploding everywhere around me, kicking up the familiar taste of sand, smoke, and death. I felt hidden, but simultaneously exposed. I knew this firefight, and I knew how it would end... And I knew I was dreaming. It was a cruel trick I often played on myself during sleep. I knew I could wake up at any moment and leave Fallujah behind.
I also knew my mind and body weren’t ready for that.
Sunday morning, I was clinging to much-needed REM sleep after a hell of a week. The day before, I’d competed with Rico’s powerlifting team at a raw meet up in New Port Richey. Work, too, was busy. As of that Friday, I’d served ten complaints and twenty-two subpoenas all over the Tampa Bay area. I’d also had to testify at an evidentiary hearing in Hillsborough County, because some deadbeat lied about the papers I’d left with his wife at a trailer park north of the Air Force base. After hearing my testimony, the judge turned livid on the deadbeat for wasting the honorable court’s time. I wasn’t paid for the three hours he wasted that day, but I left the courthouse with a renewed sense of respect for Florida’s judicial system. I’m sure it had eroded by the end of the day.
Beyond exhaustion and unable to feel anything but stiffness in my lower back, I lay in bed that morning for a good five minutes before I realized it was the doorbell chiming that had awakened me— three times every fifteen goddamn seconds. It may have been the first time I’d ever actually heard my doorbell. It made a dull, pitiful sound. I hoped that if I ignored it long enough, then whoever was ringing it might give up and leave, or the damn doorbell might give up and die. Ten minutes of waiting proved that to be wishful thinking. So I stumbled across my bedroom and glanced out the window: a red Porsche Boxster was parked crooked across my driveway. I still had no idea who was ringing the doorbell, but I figured whoever’d parked that car had to be some kind of prick.

S.D. Thames is the author of Foreclosure: A Novel, A Mighty Fortress, and other works of crime fiction exploring the dark side of the Sunshine State. Born in Dayton, Ohio while Jimmy Carter was president, S.D. grew up in the suburbs of Cincinnati (with intermittent stints in the bayous of Louisiana and on the riverbanks of Indiana). In 1992, his family relocated to Florida’s gulf coast, about an hour north of Tampa, where he blossomed as a rock guitarist and all around miscreant. While trudging his way through school, he held various odd jobs, including, in no particular order, working as a pizza cook and deliveryman (though never concurrently), dishwasher, newspaper salesman, custodian, carpenter, bookstore clerk, guitar instructor, and manual laborer.

After meeting the love of his life in 1995, he matured five years in one semester and eventually enrolled at the University of Florida, where he majored in English and studied about everything from Chaucer to the Twentieth-Century novel, along with a healthy dose of literary theory. After graduating, he spent a school year teaching German in high school. His life would forever change when he returned to the University of Florida to attend law school, the traditional fallback for despondent English majors. After completing his J.D., he went to work as a litigation associate at a Tampa law firm.

The ensuing seven years are a bit of a blur, but suffice it to say that, unlike the protagonist of Foreclosure, S.D. made partner the first year he was eligible, and did so without having to lie, cheat or otherwise bend the professional rules of conduct. Most days he enjoys the practice of law. He’s had the pleasure of working for a diverse array of clients, including Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies, small business owners, real estate developers, venture capitalists, non-profit organizations, parents in Central America seeking the return of their abducted children, and death-row inmates.

He still lives in Tampa, Florida, where he’s married to the love of his life (yes, the same one he met in 1995). They have one daughter, who is 8 years old and a more prolific writer than her dad.